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2D^e Htoersitie ^Literature Series; 



SNOW-BOUND: AMONG THE HILLS: 

SONGS OF LABOR: AND 

OTHER POEMS 



BY 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



WITH BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH AND 
EXPLANATORY NOTES 

■ ■ OX 1 




^f 2.77-^ 



HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
CMcago : 28 Lakeside Building 



TS Sara. 



Copyright, 1850, 1853, 1856, 1860, 1866, 1868, 1881, 1884, and 1888, 
By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Copyright, 1883 and 1894, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



Houghton, Mifflin & Co. are the only authorized pub- 
lishers of the ivorks of Longfellow, "Whittier, Lowell, 
Holmes, Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne. All editions 
which lack the imprint or authorization of Houghton, 3Iiffl,in 
& Co. are issued without the consent and contrary to the 
wishes of the authors or their heirs. 



CONTENTS. 

PA6B 

Biographical Sketch . . " v 

I. Snow-Bound 1 

II. Among the Hills . 30 

in. Songs of Labor. 

Dedication 49 

The Shoemakers .51 

The Fishermen 54 

The Lumbermen 57 

The Ship-Builders 62 

The Drovers 65 

TheHuskers 69 

The Corn-Song- 72 

IV. Selected Poems. 

The Barefoot Boy . 75 

How the Robin came 78 

TeUing- the Bees ,81 

Sweet Fern 83 

The Poor Voter on Election Day 85 

TheHm-Top 86 



JOHN GEEENLEAF WHITTIER. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, of Quaker birth 
in Puritan surroundings, was born at the homestead 
near Haverhill, Massachusetts, December 17, 1807. He 
has described his home and his boyish life in Snow- 
Bound, and the house visited thus by the storm is still 
standing. It is open to visitors, and there may be 
seen the kitchen just as it was when " the warm hearth 
seemed blazing free." At the secluded farm he lived, 
knowing the delights of the barefoot boy, and knowing 
also the bitter winds and frosty ground of a New Eng- 
land winter. He worked upon the farm and went to the 
district school. His father had a few rehgious books, 
and above all the Bible, and the schoolmaster once read 
aloud some poems of Burns in the Whittier kitchen, and 
left the book in the hands of the listening boy. 

The homely manual labor upon which he was em- 
ployed was in part the foundation of that deep interest 
which the poet never ceased to take in the toil and plain 
fortunes of the people. Throughout his poetry runs this 
golden thread of sympathy with honorable labor and 
enforced poverty, and many poems are directly in- 
spired by it. His out-door life let him into some of the 
secrets of nature, and Burns gave him the hint how to 



vi JOHN GREENLEAF WHIT TIER. 

find poetry in common things. But above all the Bible 
was the treasury from which he drew a store of fine Eng- 
lish and a deep sense of the nearness of God to man. 

While he was at work with his father he sent poems 
to neighboring newspapers and began to attract attention 
by his verses. A new academy was to be opened at 
Haverhill when he was nineteen years old, and the editor 
of the Haverhill paper offered to give him a home while 
he studied there. He had no money with which to pay 
for his schooling, but he learned quickly how to make a 
cheap kind of slipper, and was so industrious that in a 
few months he had earned enough to pay his expenses 
at the academy for six months. So closely did he cal- 
culate that at the beginning of the term he reckoned 
that he should have twenty-five cents left over at the end 
of the term, and so it proved. He paid his way and had 
just a quarter of a dollar left over. It was the rule of 
his life never to buy anything till he had the money 
in hand to pay for it, and though he was pinched for 
means and had a hard struggle up to middle life he 
never was in debt. 

After a year or so at the academy he had the oppor- 
tunity to be editor of a Boston weekly paper, and after- 
ward edited for a while a paper in Hartford. He was 
much interested in politics and when a young man was 
talked of for Congress. But at this time, when he was 
apparently at the beginning of a career as a public man, 
he threw away his chance by allying himself with the 
anti- slavery agitators, who for many years were de- 
nounced by both the great political parties and used their 
influence chiefly outside of the parties. When Whittier 
threw himself into this cause, however, he found his voice. 
Before he had been writing smooth, agreeable poetry 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. vii 

which was much like other poetry of the clay and had no 
great distinction ; but now he was set on fire by his in- 
dignation at the great wrong done by slavery, and he 
began to pour out verses which were like a trumpet blast. 
Not only so, but singing these real war songs he learned 
the very art of poetry, and then all his love for nature 
and man and God found expression in beautiful poems 
which had nothing to do with slavery. No American 
writer, unless Irving be excepted, has done so much 
to throw a graceful veil of poetry and legend over the 
country of his daily life. Essex county in Massachu- 
setts and the beaches lying between Newburyport and 
Portsmouth blossom with flowers of Whittier's planting ; 
the region approaching the White Mountains is warm 
with the color he has thrown on hill and lake and forest. 
He has made rare use of the homely stories he heard in 
his childhood or learned afterward from familiar inter- 
course with country people ; and he has himself used in- 
vention delicately and in harmony with the spirit of the 
New England coast. Although of a body of men who 
in earlier days had been persecuted by the Puritans of 
New England, his generous mind did not fail to detect 
all the good that was in the stern creed and life of the 
persecutors, and to bring it forward into the light of his 
poetry. 

In a number of his poems he drew his material from 
the relation held between the Indians and the settlers. 
His sympathy was always with the persecuted and op- 
pressed, and so while historically he found an object of 
pity and a subject for national self-reproach in the Indian, 
his profoundest compassion and most stirring indignation 
were called out by African slavery. It is not too much 
to say that in the slow development of public sentiment 



viii JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Whittier's steady song was one of the most powerful ad- 
vocates that the slave had, all the more powerful that it 
was free from malignity or unjust accusation. 

His fondness for a story has led him to use the ballad 
form in many cases, such as Mabel Martin, Skipper 
Iresoris Ride and Mary Garvin. The catholic mind of 
this writer and his instinct for discovering the pure moral 
in human action are disclosed by a number of poems, 
drawn from a wide range of historical fact, dealing with 
a great variety of religious faiths and circumstances of 
life, but always pointing to some sweet and strong truth 
of the divine life. Of such are The Brother of Mercy, 
The Gift of Tritemius, The Two Rahhins, and others. 
Whittier's Poetical Works are contained in four volumes, 
but have also been brought together into one substan- 
tial one, entitled The Cambridge Whittier. His JProse 
Works are comprised in three volumes ; they consist 
mainly of his contributions to journals and of Leaves 
from Margaret Smith's Journal, a fictitious diary of a 
visitor to New England in 1678. 

He died at Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, Septem- 
ber 7, 1892, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. 



SNOW-BOUND: A WINTEE IDYL. 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES 
THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR. 

The inmates of the family at the Whittier homestead 
who are referred to in the poem were my father, 
mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and 
aunt, both unmarried. In addition, there was the district 
school master, who boarded with us. The " not unf eared, 
half -welcome guest " was Harriet Livermore, daughter 
of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a young woman 
of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, eccentric, with slight 
control over her violent temper, which sometimes made 
her religious profession doubtful. She was equally ready 
to exhort in school-house prayer-meetings and dance in 
a Washington ball-room, while her father was a member 
of Congress. She early embraced the doctrine of the 
Second Advent, and felt it her duty to proclaim the 
Lord's speedy coming. With this message she crossed 
the Atlantic and spent the greater part of a long life in 
travelling over Europe and Asia. She lived some time 
with Lady Hester Stanhope, a woman as fantastic and 
mentally strained as herself, on the slope of Mt. Leba- 
non, but finally quarrelled with her in regard to two 
white horses with red marks on their backs which sug- 
gested the idea of saddles, on which her titled hostess 
expected to ride into Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend 
of mine found her, when quite an old woman, wandering 
in Syria with a tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental 



2 SNOW-BOUND. 

notion that madness is inspiration accepted her as their 
prophetess and leader. At the time referred to in Snow- 
Bound she was boarding at the Rocks Village, about 
two miles from us. 

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had 
scanty sources of information ; few books and only a 
small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the 
Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was 
a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My 
father when a young man had traversed the wilderness 
to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with In- 
dians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French 
villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunt- 
ing and fishing, and, it must be confessed, with stories 
which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and appa- 
ritions. My mother, who was born in the Indian-haunted 
region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, between Dover 
and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of the savages, 
and the narrow escape of her ancestors. She described 
strange people who lived on the Piscataqua and Cocheco, 
among whom was Bantam the sorcerer. I have in my 
possession the wizard's " conjuring book," which he sol- 
emnly opened when consulted. It is a copy of Corne- 
lius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651, dedicated to Doc- 
tor Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, had learned 

" the art of glammorie 
In Padua beyond the sea," 

and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, where 
he was at one time a resident, as the first man who dared 
petition the General Court for liberty of conscience. The 
full title of the book is Three Books of Occult Philoso- 
phy : hy Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of 
both Laws, Coimsellor to Ccesar's Sacred Majesty and 
Judge of the Prerogative Court. 



L 
SNOW-BOUND. 

A WINTER IDYL. 

*'As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so good Spirits 
which be Angels of Light are augmented not only by the Divine light of the 
Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire : and as the Celestial Fire drives 
away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of Wood doth the same." — CoRc 
Agreppa, Occult Philosophy, Book I. ch v. 

" Annoimced by all tixe trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow ; and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight ; the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, inclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

Emeesox, Tlie Snow-Storm, 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 
5 Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat. 
It sank from sight before it set. 
A chill no coat, however stout, 
10 Of homespun stuff c ould quite shut out, 
A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 
That checked, mid-vein, the circHn'^ race 



WHITTIER. 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 
The coming of the snow-storm told. 
16 The wind blew east ; we heard the roar 
Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 
And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 
Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 

20 Brought in the wood from out of doors, 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows % 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn ; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 

25 Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows ; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch. 
The cock his crested helmet bent 

30 And down his querulous challenge sent. 
Unwarmed by any sunset light 
The gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 

36 As zigzag wavering to and fro 

Crossed and recrossed the winged snow : 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window-frame. 
And through the glass the clothes-line posts 

40 Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 

So all night long the storm roared on : 
The morning broke without a sun ; 
In tiny spherule traced with lines 



SNOW-BOUND. b 

Of Nature's geometric signs, 
46 In starry flake and jDellicle 

All day the hoary meteor fell ; 

And, when the second morning shone. 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 
60 Around the glistening wonder bent 

The blue walls of the firmament. 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 
55 Took marvellous shapes ; strange domes and towers 

Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 

Or garden-wall, or belt of wood ; 

A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed, 

A fenceless drift what once was road ; 
60 The bridle-post an old man sat 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat ; 

The weU-curb had a Chinese roof ; 

And even the long sweep, high aloof, 

In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
65 Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

A prompt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : '' Boys, a path ! " 
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 

65. The Leaning Tower of Pisa, in Italy, which incliaes from the perpen- 
dicular a little more than six feet ia eighty, is a campanile, or bell-tower, 
built of white marble, very beautiful, but so famous for its singular deflection 
from perpendicularity as to be known almost wholly as a curiosity. Opinions 
differ as to the leaning being the result of accident or design, but the better 
judgment makes it an effect of the character of the soil on which it is built. 
The Cathedral to which it belongs has suffered so much from a similar cause 
that there is not a vertical line in it. 



Q WHITTIER. 

70 Our buskins on our feet we drew ; 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 

We cut the solid whiteness through. 

And, where the drift was deepest, made 
75 A tunnel walled and overlaid 

With dazzling crystal : we had read 

Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 

And to our own his name we gave, 

With many a wish the luck were ours 
80 To test his lamp's supernal powers. 

We reached the barn with merry din. 

And roused the prisoned brutes within. 

The old horse thrust his long head out, 

And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
85 The cock his lusty greeting said. 

And forth his speckled harem led ; 

The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 

And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 

The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
90 Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 

Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 

And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 
The loosening drift its breath before ; 
95 Low circling round its southern zone, 
The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 
No church-bell lent its Christian tone 
To the savage air, no social smoke 
Curled over woods- of snow-hung oak. 

90. Amun, or Ammon, was an Egyptian being, representing an attribute 
of Deity under the form of a ram. 



SNOW-BOUND. 

100 A solitude made more intense 
By dreary-voiced elements, 
The shrieking of the mindless wind, 
The moaning tree-boughs swaying blinds 
And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

105 Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 
Beyond the circle of our hearth 
No welcome sound of toil or mirth 
Unbound the spell, and testified 
Of human life and thought outside. 

110 We minded that the sharpest ear 
The buried brooklet could not hear, 
The music of whose liquid lip 
Had been to us companionship. 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 

115 To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 

120 We piled with care our nightly stack 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — ■ 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick. 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 

125 And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear. 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 

130 Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flovrer-like, into rosy bloom % 



WHITTIER. 

While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 

135 Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turk's heads on the andirons glowed ; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 

140 Whispered the old rhyme : " Under the tree^ 
When fire outdoors burns merrily, 
There the witches are making teaP 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full ; the hill-range stood 

145 Transfigured in the silver flood, 

Its blown snows flashing cold and keen. 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 

i&o Against the whiteness of their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

155 Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
Whfle the red logs before us beat 

xu The frost-line back with tropic heat ; 
And ever, when a louder blast 
Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 




THE WHITTIER HOME. 



The above picture is copied from a photogTapli of the kitchen in the 
Whittier homestead at East Haverhill, Mass., so graphically described in 
" Snow-Bonnd." The room on the right, opening* from the kitchen, is the 
chamber in which the poet was born. The homestead is now owned by a 
Whittier Memorial Association, and, being open to the public, is visited by 
thousands of persons annually. 



snow-bound. 

The merrier up its roaring draught 

The great throat of the chimney laughed, 

165 The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to faU ; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 

170 Between the andirons' straddling feet, 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row. 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood, 

ITS What matter how the night behaved ? 

What matter how the north-wind raved ? 

Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 

Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 

O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
3,80 As was my sire's that winter day. 

How strange it seems, with so much gone 

Of life and love, to still live on ! 

Ah, brother ! only I and thou 

Are left of all that circle now, — 
185 The dear home faces whereupon 

That fitful firelight paled and shone. 

Henceforward, listen as we will, 

The voices of that hearth are still ; 

Look where we may, the wide earth o'er, 
190 Those lighted faces smile no more. 

We tr^ad the paths their feet have worn, 
We sit beneath their orchard trees, 
We hear, like them, the hum of bees 

And rustle of the bladed corn ; 



10 WHITTIER. 



i»5 We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
■^- No voice is heard, no sign is made, 
No step is on the conscious floor ! 
200 Yet Love will dream and Faith will trust 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
20B Who, hopeless, lays his dead away. 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
210 That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

We sped the time with stories old. 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 
Or stammered from our school-book lore 
215 " The chief of Gambia's golden shore." 
How often since, when all the land 
Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand. 
As if a trumpet called, I 've heard 
_Dame Mercy Warren's rousing word : 
220 "Does not the voice of reason cry, 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of hondagefly, 
Nor deign to live a burdened slave ! " 

219. Mrs. Mercy Warren was the Vifeof James Warren, a prominent patriot 
at the beginning of the Revolution. Her poetry was i-ead in an age that had 
in America little to read under that name ; her society was sought by the best 
laen. 



SNO W-BO UND. 11 

Our father rode again liis ride 
226 On Memphremagog's wooded side ; 

Sat down again to moose and samp 

In trapper's hut and Indian camp ; 

Lived o'er the old idyllic ease ^ , 

Beneath St. Frangois' hemlock-trees ; 
230 Again for him the moonlight shone 

On Norman cap and bodiced zone ; 

Again he heard the violin play 

Which led the village dance away, 

And mingled in its merry whirl 
235 The grandam and the laughing girl. 

Or, nearer home, our steps he led 

Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 
Mile-wide as flies the laden bee ; 

Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
240 Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 
The low green prairies of the sea. 

We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the driftwood coals ; 
246 The chowder on the sand-beach made, 

Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot. 

With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 

We heard the tales of witchcraft old. 

And dream and sign and marvel told 
260 To sleepy listeners as they lay 

Stretched idly on the salted hay. 

Adrift along the winding shores. 

When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundalow, 
266 And idle lay the useless oars. 



12 WHITTIER. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 

Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 

Told how the Indian hordes came down 

At midnight on Cochecho town, 
260 And how her own great-uncle bore 

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 

Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
265 Of simple Hfe and country ways), 

The story of her early days, — 

She made us welcome to her home ; 

Old hearths grew wide to give us room j 

We stole with her a frightened look 
270 At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 

The fame whereof went far and wide 

Through aU th« simple country-side ; *' 

We heard the hawks at twilight play, 

The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
276 The loon's weird laughter far away ; 

We fished her little trout-brook, knew 

What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 

What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 

She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
280 Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 

The ducks' black squadron anchored lay. 

And heard the wild geese calling loud 

Beneath the gray November cloud. 

Then, haply, with a look more grave, 
288 And soberer tone, some tale she gave 

From painful Sewel's ancient tome, 

259. Dover in New Hampshire. 

286, William Sewel was the historian of the Quakers. Charles Lamli 



SNOW-BOUND. 13 

Beloved in every Quaker home, 

Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, 

Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, — ■ 
290 Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 

Who, when the dreary calms prevailed. 

And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 

And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence, mad for food, 
295 "With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death. 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies. 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 
300 The good man from his living grave, 



seemed to have as good an opinion of the book as Whittier. In his essay 
A Quakers^ Meeting in Essays of Elia, he says : "Reader, if you are not ac- 
quainted with it, I would recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to 
read Sewel's History of the Quakers. . . . It is far more edifying and affecting 
than anything you wiU read of Wesley or his colleagues." 

289. Thomas Chalkley was an Englishman of Quaker parentage, bom in 
1675, who travelled extensively as a preacher, and finally made his home in 
Philadelphia. He died in 1749 ; his Journal was first published in 1747. Hia 
own narrative of the incident which the poet relates is as follows : " To stop 
their murmuring, I told them they should not need to cast lots, which was 
usual in such cases, which of us should die first, for I would freely offer up my 
life to do them good. One said, 'God bless you ! I will not eat any of you.' 
Another said, ' He would die before he would eat any of me ; ' and so said 
several. I can truly say, on that occasion, at that time, my life was not dear 
to me, and that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition : and as I was 
leaning over the side of the vessel, thoughtfully considering my proposal to 
the company, and looking in my mind to Him that made me, a very large dol- 
phin came up towards the top or surface of the water, and looked me in the 
face ; and I called the people to put a hook into the sea, and take him, for 
here is one come to redeem me (I said to them). And they put a hook into 
the sea, and the fish readily took it, and they caught him. He was longer 
than myself. I think he was about six feet long, and the largest that ever I 
saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not to distrust the providence 
of the Almighty. The people were quieted by this act of Providence, and 
murmured no more. We caught enough to eat plentifully of, tiU we got iuta 
the capes of Delaware." 



14 WHITTIER. 

A ripple on the water grew, 
A school of porpoise flashed in view. 
" Take, eat," he said, " and be content $ 
These fishes in my stead are sent 
305 By Him who gave the tangled ram 
To spare the child of Abraham." 

Our uncle, innocent of books, 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 

The ancient teachers never dumb 
810 Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. / 

In moons and tides and weather wisBj 

He read the clouds as prophecies, 

And foul or fair could well divine, 

By many an occult hint and sign, 
815 Holding the cunning-warded keys 

To all the woodcraft mysteries ; 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 
i That all her voices in his ear 
VOf beast or bird had meanings clear, 
820 Like Apollonius of old. 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said ; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man, 
S25 Content to live where life began ; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

810. The measure requires the accent ly'ceum, but in stricter use the accent 
^ lyce/um. 

320. A philosopher born in the first century of the Christian era, of whom 
many strange stories were told, especially regarding his converse with birds 
and animals, 

322. Hermes Trismegistus, a celebrated Egyptian priest and philosopher, 
to whom was attributed the revival of geometry, arithmetic, and art among 
t&e Egyptians. He was little later than Apollonius. 



SNOW-BOUND. 16 

I' 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 
330 The common features magnified, 
- - -As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, — • 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 
336 The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun ; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten wasn the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 
340 From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the mink 

Went fishing down the river-brink. 

In fields with bean or clover gay, 

The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 
345 Peered from the doorway of his cell ; 

The muskrat plied the mason's trade. 

And tier by tier his mud-walls laid ; 

And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

% 
350 Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of cheer 

And voice in dreams I see and hear, — 

(The sweetest woman ever Fate 

[Perverse denied a household mate,) 

Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
355 Found peace in love's unselfishness, 

332. Grilbert White, of Selborne, England, was a clergyman who wrote the 
Jflaturcd History of Selborne, a minute, affectionate, and charming description 
of what could be seen as it were from his own doorstep. The accuracy of his 
observation and the delightfulnass of his manner haye kept the book a classic. 



16 WHITTIER. 

And welcome whereso'er she went, 

A calm and gracious element, 

Whose presence seemed the sweet income 

And womanly atmosphere of home, — 

360 Called up her girlhood memories, 
The huskings and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 

365 A golden woof -thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhciod ; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mu'age loomed across her way ; 

370 The morning dew, that dried so soon 
With others, glistened at her noon ; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 

376 The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who had for such but thought of scorno 

\There, too, our elder sister pHed 
Her evening task the stand beside | 

\ 380 A full, rich nature, free to trust, 
^ Truthful and almost sternly just, 
/ Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 

And make her generous thought a fact, 

/ Keeping with many a light disguise 

/ ^85 The secret of self-sacrifice. 

O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best 
That Heaven itself could, give thee, -— restj 



SNO W-BO UND. 17 

Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
390 With thee beneath the low green tent 
Whose curtain never outward swings ! 

/ As one who held herself a part 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 
Against the household bosom lean, 
395 Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat. 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 
Now bathed within the fadeless green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
400 Oh, looking from some heavenly hill. 
Or from the shade of saintly palms, 
Or silver reach of river calms, 
Do those large eyes behold me still ? 
With me one little year ago : — 
405 The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain ; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
410 I see the violet-sprinkled sod. 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
415 The birds are glad ; the brier-rose fills 
^ The air with sweetness ; all the hiUs 

Stretch green to June's unclouded sky ; 

398. TK' unfading green would be harsher but more correct since the t© 
mination less is added to nouns and not to verba. 

2 



18 WBITTIER. 

But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
420 A loss in all familiar thing's, 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee. 

Am I not richer than of old ? 
Safe in thy immortality, 
425 What change can reach the wealth I hold ? 
What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me ? 
And while in life's late afternoon. 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
430 I walk to meet the night that soon 
; Shall shape and shadow overflow, 

I cannot feel that thou art far. 
Since near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 
436 Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 
The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, ^' 
The master of the district school 

440 Held at the fire his favored place ; 
Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
The uncertain j)rophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 

445 Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among. 
From whence his yeoman father wrung^ 



SNOW-BOUND. 19 

450 By patient toil subsistence scant, 

Not competence and yet not want, 

He early gained the power to pay 

His cheerful, self-reliant way ; 

Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
455 To peddle warps from town to town ; 

Or through the long vacation's reach 

In lonely lowland districts teach. 

Where all the droll experience found 

At stranger hearths in boarding round^ 
460 The moonht skater's keen delight. 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty nighty 

The rustic party, with its rough 

Accompaniment of bhnd-man's-buff. 

And whirling plate, and forfeits paid, 
465 His winter task a pastime made. 

Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 

He tuned his merry violin, 

Or played the athlete in the barn, 

Or held the good dame's winding yarn, 
470 Or mirth-provoking versions told 

Of classic legends rare and old. 

Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 

Had all the commonplace of home, 

And little seemed at best the odds 
475 'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods ; 

Where Pindus-born Araxes took 

The guise of any grist-mill brook, 

And dread Olympus at his will 

Became a huckleberry hill. 

476. Pindus is the mountain chain which, running from north to south, 
nearly bisects Greece. Five rivers take their rise from the central peak, tho 
Aous, the AiachthuSj the Haliacmon, the Peneus, and the Achelous. 



20 WHITTIER. 

480 A careless boy that night he seemed ; 
But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 

485 Large-brained, clear-eyed, — of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 
"Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong assail J 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 

490 Uphft the black and white alike ; 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance. 
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth, 

496 Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible ; ^ 
The cruel lie of caste refute, 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 

500 For blind routine, wise-handed skill ; 
A school-house plant on every hill. 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick wires of intelligence ; 
I Till North and South together brought 

' 605 Shall own the same electric thought. 
In peace a common flag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought.. 

©10 Another guest that winter night 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 



SNOW-BOUND. 21 

Unmarked by time, and yet not yoimg, 
The honeyed music of her tongue 
And words of meekness scarcely told 
615 A nature passionate and bold, 

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, 
Its milder features dwarfed beside 
Her unbent will 's majestic pride. 
\ She sat among us, at the best, 
620 A not unfeared, half-welcome guest, 
Rebuking with her cultured phrase 
Our homeliness of words and ways. , 

A certain pard-hke, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the lash, 
626 Lent the white teeth their dazzUng flash ; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light ; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
630 Condemned to share her love or hate. 
A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like degree 
___ The vixen and the devotee,_ 

635 Revealing with each freak or feint 
The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist ; 
640 The warm, dark languish of her eyes 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 

536. See Shakespeare's comedy of the Taming of the Shrew. ^ 

537. St. Catherine of Siena, who is represented as ha^nng wonderful vis* 
fons. She made a vow of silence for three years. -J^ 



22 WHITTIER. 

Brows saintly calm and lips devout 

Knew every change of scowl and pout | 

And the sweet voice had notes more high 
84B And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 

Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 

What convent-gate has held its lock 

Against the challenge of her knock ! 
660 Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thoroughfares, 

Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 

Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 

Or startling on her desert throne 
565 The crazy Queen of Lebanon 

With claims fantastic as her own, 

Her tireless feet have held their way ; 

And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 

She watches under Eastern skies, 
560 With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the fiesh. 

Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 

555. An interesting account of Lady Hester Stanliope, an English gentle* 
woman who led a singular life on Mount Lebanon in Syria, will be found in 
Kinglake's Eothen, chapter viii. 

562. This not un-feared, half-welcome guest was Miss Harriet Livermore. 
daughter of Judge Livermore of New Hampshire . She was a woman of fine 
powers, but wayward, wild, and enthusiastic. She went on an independent 
mission to the Western Indians, whom she, in common with some others, be-> 
lieved to be remnants of the lost tribes of Israel. At the time of this narra- 
tive she was about twenty-eight years old, but much of her life afterward waa 
spent in the Orient. She was at one time the companion and friend of Lady 
Hester Stanhope, but finally quarreled with her about the use of the holy 
horses kept in the stable in waiting for the Lord's ride to Jerusalem at the 
.advent. 



1 

SNOW-BOUND. 23 

\ 
' »«6 The Outward wayward life we see, 

The hidden springs we may not know. 
y Nor is\ it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
Through what ancestral years fias run 
670 The sorrow with the woman born, 
What forged her cruel chain of moods^ 
What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mutSy 
What mingled madness in the blood, 
575 A lifelong discord and annoy, 
Water of tears with oil of joy. 
And hid within the folded bud 
- ^ Perversities of flower and fruit. 

f It is not ours to separate 
580, The tangled skein of will and fate, 

To show what metes and bounds should stand 
Upon the soul's debatable land. 
And between choice and Providence 
Divide the circle of events ; 
885 But He who knows our frame is just, 
Merciful and compassionate, 
And full of sweet assurances 
And hope for all the language is. 
That He remembereth we are dust I 



590 At last the great logs, crumbling low, 
/Sent out a duU and duller glow. 

The bull's-eye watch that hung in view? 

Ticking its weary circuit through, 

Pointed with mutely-warning sign 
895 Its black hand to the hour of nine. 

That sign the pleasant circle broke s 



24 WHITTIER. 

My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
And laid it tenderly away, 

600 Then roused liimseK to safely cover 
The dull red brand with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 

«05 Her grateful sense of happiness 

For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
And love's contentment more than wealthy 
With simple wishes (not the weak, 
Vain prayers which no fulfihnent seek, 

«io But such as warm the generous heart, 

O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
, That none might lack, that bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and lighto 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
615 The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock. 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost. 
The board-nails snapping in the frost ; 
620 And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the lightsifted snow-flakes fall, 
' But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new ; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs greWj, 
625 Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars. 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 



SNOW-BOUND. 25 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
630 Of merry voices high and clear ; 

And saw the teamsters drawing near 

To break the drifted highways out. 

Down the long hillside treading slow 

We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
635 Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 

Their straining nostrils white with frost. 

Before our door the straggling train 

Drew up, an added team to gain. 

The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 

640 Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 

From lip to lip ; the younger folks 

Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, roUed, 

Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
645 And woodland paths that wound between 

Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed. 

From every barn a team afoot. 

At every house a new recruit. 

Where, drawi^ by Nature's subtlest law, 
650 Haply the watchful young men saw 

Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 

And curious eyes of merry girls. 

Lifting their hands in mock defence 

Against the snow-balls' compliments, 
655 And reading in each missive tost 

The charm which Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sounds 
And, following where the teamsters led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 

659. The wise old Doctor was Dr. Weld of Haverhill, an able man, who died 
at the age of ninety-six. 



26 WHITTIER. 

660 Just pausing at our door to say, 
In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 
That some poor neighbor sick abed 
865 At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 
What mattered in the sufferer's sight 
The Quaker matron's inward light, 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
670 AU hearts confess the saints elect 

Who, twain in faith, in love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 
The Christian pearl of charity ! 

So days went on : a week had passed 
675 Since the great world was heard from last. 

The Almanac we studied o'er. 

Read and reread our little store 

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 

One harmless novel, mostly hid 
680 From younger eyes, a book forbid, 

And poetry, (or good or bad, 

A single book was all we had,) 

Where EUwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen Nine, 
685 Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 

The wars of David and the Jews. 

683, Thomas EUwood, one of the Society of Friends, a contemporary and 
friend of Milton, and the suggestor of Paradise Regained, wrote an epic 
poem in five books, called Davideis, the life of King David of Israel. He 
wrote the book, we are told, for his own diversion, so it was not necessary 
that others should be diverted by it. EUwood's autobiography, a quaint and 
delightful book, has tecently been issued in Howells's series of Choice 
Autobiography, 



SNOW-BOUND. 27 

At last the floundering carrier bore 

The village paper to our door. 

Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 
690 To warmer zones the horizon spread ; 
s In panoramic length unrolled 

We saw the marvels that it told. 

Before us passed the painted Creeks, 
And daft McGregor on his raids . 
695 In Costa Rica's everglades. 

And up Taygetus winding slow 

Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 

A Turk's head at each saddle bow ! 

Welcome to us its week-old news, 
TOO Its corner for the rustic Muse, 

Its monthly gauge of snow and rain. 

Its record, mingling in a breath 

The wedding knell and dirge of death ; 

Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
705 The latest culprit sent to jail ; 

Its hue and cry of stolen and lost. 

Its vendue sales and goods at cost. 
And traffic calling loud for gain. 

We felt the stir of hall and street, 
710 The pulse of life that round us beat ; 

The chill embargo of the snow 

Was melted in the genial glow ; 

Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 

And all the world was ours once more ! 

693. Referring to the removal of the Creek Indians from Georgia to beyond 
the Mississippi. 

694. In 1822 Sir Gregor McGregor, a Scotchman, began an ineffectual at- 
tempt to establish a colony in Costa Rica. 

697. Taygetus is a mountain on the Gulf of Messenia in Greece, and near by 
is the district of Maina, noted for its robbers and pirates. It was from these 
moimtaineers that Ypsilanti, a Greek patriot, drew his cavalry in the struggle 
With Turkey which resulted in the independence of Greece. 



28 WHITTIER. 

715 Qasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book ; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 

720 Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past ; 
Where, closely minghng, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe ; 
The monographs of outHved years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 

72e Green hiUs of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

730 The restless sands' incessant fall, 

Importunate hours that hours succeed, , 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need. 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids ; 

786 I hear again the voice that bids 

The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears : 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

740 Yet, haply, in some luU of life, 

Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, 



741. The name is drawn from a historic compact in 1040, when the Church 
forbade the barons to make any attack on each other between sunset on 
Wednesday and sunrise on the following Monday, or upon any ecclesiastical 
fast or feast day. It also provided that no man was to molest a laborer work- 
ing in the fields, or to lay hands on any implement of husbandry, on pain ot 
ezGommunication. 



SNOW-BOUND. 29 

The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 
Dreaming in throngful city ways 

Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 
745 And dear and early friends — the few 

Who yet remain — shall pause to view 
These Flemish pictures of old days ; 

Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 

And stretch the hands of memory forth 
760 To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 

And thanks untraced to lips unknown 

Shall greet me hke the odors blown 

From unseen meadows newly mown. 

Or lilies floating in some pond, 
765 Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond ; 

The traveller owns the grateful sense 

Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 

And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 

The benediction of the air. 

747. The Flemisli school of painting was chiefly occupied with homely isf 
teriors. 



30 WHITTIER 



n. 
AMONG THE HILLS. 

PRELUDE. 

AxoiifG the roadside, like the flowers of gold 
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 
B Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the south, 
Unfelt ; yet, closely scanned, yon maple leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 

10 Confesses it. The locust by the wall 

Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighboring hill, 

15 Huddled along the stone wall's shady side. 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift still 
Defied the dog-star. Through the open door 
A drowsy smeU of flowers — gray heliotrope. 
And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette — 

20 Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 
To the pervading symphony of peace. 

2. The Incas were the kings of the ancient Peruvians. At Tucay, theii 
favorite residence, the gardens, according to Prescott, contained " forms of 
vegetable life skillfully imitated in gold and silver." See History of the Coti" 
fuest of Peru, i. 130= 



AMONG THE HILLS. 31 

No time is this for hands long over-worn 

To task their strength : and (unto Him be praise 

Who giveth quietness !) the stress and strain 

25 Of years that did the work of centuries 

Have ceased, and we can draw our breath once more 
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 
Make glad their nooning underneath the elms 
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, 

30 I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn 

The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dreaming o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 
35 Proud of field-lore and harvest craft ; and feeling 

All their fine possibilities, how rich 

And restful even poverty and toil 

Become when beauty, harmony, and love 

Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat 
40 At evening in the patriarch's tent, when man 

Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock 

The symbol of a Christian chivalry, 

Tender and just and generous to her 

Who clothes with grace all duty ; still, I know 
45 Too well the picture has another side. 

How wearily the grind of toil goes on 

Where love is wanting, how the eye and ear 

And heart are starved amidst the plenitude 

Of nature, and how hard and colorless 
eo Is Hfe without an atmosphere. I look 

Across the lapse of half a century. 

And call to mind old homesteads, where no flower 

26. The volume in wMch this poem stands first, and to which it gives the 
name, was published in the fall of 1868. 



32 WHITTIER. 

Told that the spring had come, but evil weeds, ^ 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock, in the place 

BB Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 

And honeysuckle, where the house walls seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To cast the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
Across the curtainless windows from whose panes 

60 Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness ; 
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, unwashed 
(Broom-clean I think they called it) ; the best room 
Stifling with cellar damp, shut from the air 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pictureless 

65 Save the inevitable sampler hung 

Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, beneath 
Impossible willows ; the wide-throated hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half concealing 

70 The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's back ; 
And, in sad keeping with all things about them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
With scarce a human interest save their own 

15 Monotonous round of small economies, 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, 
Treading the May-flowers with regardless feet ; 
For them the song-sparrow and the bobolink 

80 Sang not, nor winds made music in the leaves ; 
For them in vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, 
The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 

82 But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew-rent, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 33 

Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork with the least possible outlay 
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 

90 Of Christian charity and love and duty, 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac : 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, 
And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, 

05 The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, 
The sun and air his sole inheritance, 
Laughed at poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads of a land 
100 Where whoso wisely wills and acts may dwell 
As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time, 
105 Our yeoman should be equal to his home, 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must own 
110 With the knife-grinder of whom Canning sings, 
" Story, God bless you ! I have none to tell you ! ") 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 

110 , The Anti-Jacobin was a periodical published in England in 1797-98, to 
ridicule democratic opinions, and in it Canning, who afterward became 
premier of England, wrote many light verses and jeux d^ esprit, among them a 
himiorous poem called the Needy Knife-Grinder, in burlesque of a poem by 
Bouthey. The knife-grinder is anxiously appealed to to tell his story of 
wrong and injustice, but answers as here : — 

"Story, God bless you ! I've none to tell." 



34 WHITTIER. 

The beauty and the joy within tneir reach, — 
Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes 

iiD Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our own, 
Heard where some breezy balcony looks down 
On happy homes, or where the lake in the moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as Ruth, 

120 In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a prophecy, 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up 

125 Through broader culture, finer manners, love, 
And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

O Golden Age, whose light is of the dawn, 

And not of sunset, forward, not behind, 

Flood the new heavens and earth, and with thee 

bring 
130 All the old virtues, whatsoever things 
Are pure and honest and of good repute, 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 
135 Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 

Between the right and wrong ; but give the heart 

The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 

Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved so 

long, 
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 

134. The Fortunate Isles, or Isles of the Blest, were imaginary islands io 
the West, in classic mythology, set in a sea which was warmed by the rays of 
the declming sun. Hither the fayorites of the gods were borne and dwelt ia 
endless joy. 



AMONG THE HILLS, 35 

140 With joy and wonder ; let all harmonies 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 
The princely guest, whether in soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, 
And, lending life to the dead form of faith, 

143 Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God ; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, 

150 The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. 
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
Should minister, as outward types and signs 
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 

165 The one great purpose of creation. Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven ! 

AMONG THE HILLS. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 

And vexed the vales with raining, 
And all the woods were sad with mist, 
160 And all the brooks complaining. 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 

The mountain veils asunder. 
And swept the valleys clean before 

The besom of the thunder. 

165 Through Sandwich notch the west-wind sang 

Good morrow to the cotter ; 

165. Sandwich Notch, Chocorua Mountain, Ossipee Lake, and the Bearcamp 
Eiver are all striking features of the scenery in that part of New Hampshire 



36 WHITTIER. 

And once again Chocorua's horn 
Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake Ossipee, 
170 Once more the sunshine wearing, 
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 
His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky 
The peaks had winter's keenness ; 
176 And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh greenness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 
Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 
180 And sunshine danced and flickered. 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

185 I call to mind those banded vales 
Of shadow and of shining, 
Through which, my hostess at my side, 
I drove in day's declining. 

We held our sideling way above 
190 The riv>er's whitening shallows, 

which lies just at the entrance of the White Mountain region. Many oi 
Whittier'smost graceful poems are drawn from the suggestions of this country, 
where he has been wont to spend his summer months of late, and a mountaitt 
near West Ossipee has received bis name. 



AMONG THE HILLS, 37 

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns 
Swept through and through by swallows, — 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 
And larches climbing darkly 
195 The mountain slopes, and, over all, 
The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 

With gaps of brightness riven, — 
How through each pass and hollow streamed 
200 The purpling lights of heaven, — 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 

From far celestial fountains, — 
The great sun flaming through the rifts 

Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

305 We paused at last where home-bound cows 
Brought down the pasture's treasure, 
And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night hawk's sullen plunge, 
210 The crow his tree-mates calling : 

The shadows lengthening down the slopes 
About our feet were falling. 

And through them smote the level sun 
In broken lines of splendor, 
815 Touched the gray rocks and made the green 
Of the shorn grass more tender. 



38 WHITTIEE. 

The maples bending o'er the gate, 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 
With yeUow warmth, the golden glow 
220 Of coming autumn hinted. 

Keen white between the farm-house showed. 
And smiled on porch and trellis 

The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace. 

225 And weaving garlands for her dog, 
'Twixt chidings and caresses, 
A human flower of childhood shook 
The sunshine from her tresses. 

On either hand we saw the signs 
230 Of fancy and of shrewdness, 

Where taste had wound its arms of vines 
Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Shook hands, and called to Mary : 
235 Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness ; 
A music as of household songs 
aao Was in her voice of sweetness. 

Not beautiful in curve and line. 
But something more and better, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 39 

The secret charm eluding art, 
Its spirit, not its letter ; — 

345 An inborn grace that nothing lacked 
Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 
The calm of self-reliance. 

Before her queenly womanhood 
250 How dared our hostess utter 
The paltry errand of her need 
To buy her fresh-churned butter ? 

She led the way with housewife pride^ 
Her goodly store disclosing, 
255 Full tenderly the golden balls 

With practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 
Of sunset, on our homeward way, 
260 I heard her simple story. 

The early crickets sang ; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narration ; 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

265 " More wise," she said, "than those who swarm 
Our hills in middle summer, 
She came, when June's first roses blow. 
To greet the early comer. 



40 WHITTIER. = 

" From school and ball and rout she came^ 
270 The city's fair, pale daughter, 
To drink the wine of mountain air 
Beside the Bearcamp Water. 

*'Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over ; 
S76 On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

" For health comes sparkling in the streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing : 
There 's iron in our Northern winds ; 
280 Our pines are trees of healing. 

" She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing-meadow, 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

285 *' BBside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 
With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

" Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
290 Had nothing mean or common, — 
Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 

** She looked up, glowing with the health 
The country air had brought her, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 41 

396 And, laughing, said : ' You lack a wife, 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

*^ * To mend your frock and bake your bread 

You do not need a lady : 
Be sure among these brown old homes 
800 Is some one waiting ready, — 

** ' Some fair, sweet girl, with skilful hand 

And cheerful heart for treasure, 
Who never played with ivory keys, 

Or danced the polka's measure.' 

806 " He bent his black brows to a frown, 
He set his white teeth tightly. 
* 'T is well,' he said, ' for one like you 
To choose for me so lightly. 

" * You think, because my life is rude 
810 I take no note of sweetness : 
I tell you love has naught to do 
With meetness or unmeetness. 

^' ^ Itself its best excuse, it asks 
No leave of pride or fashion 
316 When silken zone or homespun frock 
It stirs with throbs of passion. 

" * You think me deaf and blind : you bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 
820 We two had played together. 



42 WHITTIER. 

" * You tempt me with your laughing eyes, 
Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 

A motion as of waving grain, 
A music as of thrushes. 

S2B " ' The plaything of your summer sport, 
The spells you weave around me 
You cannot at your will undo, 
Nor leave me as you found me. 

" * You go as lightly as you came, 
330 Your life is well without me ; 

What care you that these hills will close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

" ' No mood is mine to seek a wife, 
Or daughter for my mother : 
83B Who loves you loses in that love 
All power to love another ! 

" ' I dare your pity or your scorn, 

With pride your own exceeding ; 
I fling my heart into your lap 
340 Without a word of pleading.' 

" She looked up in his face of pain 

So archly, yet so tender : 
* And if I lend you mine,' she said, 

' Will you forgive the lender ? 

845 " ' Nor frock nor tan can hide the man ; 
And see you not, my farmer, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 43 

How weak and fond a woman waits 
Behind this silken armor ? 



" ' I love you : on that love alone, 
850 And not my worth, presuming, 
Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? ' 

" Alone the hangbird overhead, 
His hair-swung cradle straining, 

365 Looked down to see love's miracle, — 

The giving that is gaining. 

" And so the farmer found a wife, 

His mother found a daughter : 
There looks no happier home than hers 
860 On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 

" Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty ; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 

Are flowing curves of beauty. 

366 " Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 

Our door-yards brighter blooming, 
And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

*' Unspoken homilies of peace 
870 Her daily life is preaching ; 
The stiU refreshment of the dew 
Is her unconscious teaching. 



44 WHITTIER. 

" And never tenderer hand than hers 
Unknits the brow of ailing ; 
875 Her garments to the sick man's ear 
Have music in their traihng. 

" And when, in pleasant harvest moons, 

The youthful huskers gather, 
Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 
880 Defy the winter weather, — 

" In sugar-camps, when south and warm 
The winds of March are blowing. 

And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

88B " In summer, where some lilied pond 
Its virgin zone is bearing, 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 
Lights up the apple-paring, — 

" The coarseness of a ruder time 
890 Her finer mirth displaces, 
A subtler sense of pleasure fills 
Each rustic sport she graces. 

" Her presence lends its warmth and health 
To all who come before it. 
S9B If woman lost us Eden, such 
As she alone restore it. 

** For larger life and wiser aims 
The farmer is her debtor ; 



AMONG THE HILLS, 45 

Who holds to his another's heart 
400 Must needs be worse or better. 

" Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition ; 
No double consciousness divides 
The man and politician. 

405 " In party's doubtful ways he trusts 
Her instincts to determine ; 
At the loud polls, the thought of her 
Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

" He owns her logic of the heart, 
410 And wisdom of unreason. 

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs. 
The needed word in season. 

" He sees with pride her richer thought, 
Her fancy's freer ranges ; 
415 And love thus deepened to respect 
Is proof against all changes. 

^'^ And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel, 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 
420 What his may scarce unravel, 

" Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder, 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under* 



46 WHITTIER. 

426 " And higher, warmed with summer lights. 
Or winter-crowned and hoary, 
The ridged horizon lifts for him 
Its inner veils of glory. 

" He has his own free, bookless lore, 
430 The lessons nature taught him. 

The wisdom which the woods and hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

" The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter ; 
435 The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer : 

*' A latent fire of soul which lacks 

No breath of love to fan it ; 
And wit, that, like his native brooks, 
440 Plays over solid granite. 

^^ How dwarfed against his manliness 
She sees the poor pretension, 

The wants, the aims, the follies, born 
Of fashion and conv^ention I 

445 " How life behind its accidents 

Stands strong and self-sustaining, 
The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 

** And so, in grateful interchange 
Of teacher and of hearer, 



AMONG THE HILLS. 47 

Their lives their true distinctness keep 
While daily drawing nearer. 

*' And if the husband or the wife 
In homo's strong light discovers 
485 Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

** Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 

Or wonders that the truest steel 

*fio The readiest spark discloses ? 

*^ For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living : 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

465 " We send the Squire to General Court, 
He takes his young wife thither ; 
No prouder man election day 

Rides through the sweet June weathen. 

"* He sees with eyes of manly trust 
470 All hearts to her inchning ; 

Not less for him his household light 
That others share its shining." 

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew 
Before me, warmer tinted 
475 And outlined with a tenderer grace, 
The picture that she hinted. 



WHITTIER. 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 

Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 
Below us wreaths of white fog walked 
480 Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 

Sounding the summer night, the stars 
Dropped down their golden plummets ; 

The pale arc of the Northern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, — 

488 Until, at last, beneath its bridge, 

We heard the Bearcamp flowing, 
And saw across the mapled lawn 

The welcome home-lights glowing ; — 

And, musing on the tale I heard, 
490 ' T were well, thought I, if often 
To rugged farm-life came the gift 
To harmonize and soften ; — 

If more and more we found the troth 
Of fact and fancy plighted, 
496 And culture's charm and labor's strength 
In rural homes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth, 

Wifh beauty's sphere surrounding, 
And blessing toil where toil abounds 
500 With graces more abounding. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 49 



m. 

SONGS OF LABOE. 

The Songs of Labor were written in 1845 and 1846, and printed 
first in magazines. They reflect the working life of New England 
at that time before the great changes were wrought which have 
nearly put an end to some of the forms of labor, the praises of 
which here are sung. The Songs were collected into a volume 
entitled, Songs of Labor and other Poems, in 1850, and the follow- 
ing Dedication was then prefixed. 

DEDICATION. 

I WOULD the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take, 
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere. 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
6 The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee. 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain. 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
10 Calls from the westering slope of life's autumn^ 
lea. 

Above the fallen groves of green, 

Where youth's enchanted forest stood, 
Dry root and mossed trunk between. 



60 WHITTIER. 

A sober after-growth is seen, 
15 As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple 
wood! 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree ; 
And through the bleak and wintry day 
It keeps its steady green alway, — 
20 So, even my after-thoughts may have a charm for 
thee. 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse ; 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
23 And the rough ore must find its honors in its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
so The unsung beauty hid life's common things below. 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough, may gain 
A manlier spirit of content. 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
88 Where the strong working hand makes strong the 
working brain. 



22. "For the idea of this Une," says Mr. Whittier, "I am Indebted to \ 
erson in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora : — 

" ' If eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. ' " 



SONGS OF LABOR. 51 

The doom which to the guilty pair 
Without the walls of Eden came, 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
60 The burden of old crime, or mark of primal shame. 

A blessing now, a curse no more ; 

Since He, whose name we breathe with awe, 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A poor man toiling with the poor, 
45 In labor, as in prayer, fulfilling the same law. 



THE SHOEMAKERS. 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 

The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 
Young brothers of the ancient guild, 

Stand forth once more together ! 
60 Call out again your long array, 

In the olden merry manner ! 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day^ 

Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 
66 How falls the polished hammer ! 

Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 

The glossy vamp around it, 

52. October 25. St. Crispin and his brother Crispinian were said to be mar. 
tyrs of the third century who while preaching the gospel had made their livliig 
by shoemaldng. 



62 WHITTIER 

60 And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 
Whose gentle fingers bound it ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 

A hundred keels are ploughing ; 
For you, the Indian on the plain 
65 His lasso-coil is throwing ; 

For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting ; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

70 For you, from Carolina's pine 
The rosin-gum is stealing ; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling ; 
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams 
75 His rugged Alpine ledges ; 

For you, round all her shepherd homes, 
Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather, 

80 Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together ; 

Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master. 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 
85 No craftsman rallied faster. 

62. A name givei;! to the northern coast of South America when it was takes 
possession of by the Spaniards. 

72. So associated was Florence, Italy, in the minds of people with the man- 
ufacture of sewing silk, that when the industry was set up in the neighbo]% 
hood of Northampton, Mass., the factory village took the name of Florence. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 63 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, 

Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride, 

And duty done, your honor. 
90 Ye dare to trust, for honest fame. 

The jury Time empanels, 
And leave to truth each noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 
95 In strong and hearty German ; 

And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit, 

And patriot fame of Sherman ; 
Still from his book, a mystic seer, 
The soul of Behman teaches, 
100 And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 
Of Fox's leathern breeches. 

The foot is yours ; where'er it falls, 
It treads your well-wrought leather 

On earthen floor, in marble halls, 
106 On carpet, or on heather. 

Still there the sweetest charm is found 
Of matron grace or vestal's, 

As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 
Among the old celestials ! 

95. See Longfellow's poem, Nuremberg, for a reference to Hans Sachs, the 
cobbler poet. 

96. Robert Bloomfield, an English poet, author of The Farmer^s Boy, was 
bred a shoemaker, as was William Gifford, a wit and satirist, and first editor 
of the Quarterly Review, but Gifford hated his craft bitterly. 

97. Roger Sherman, one of the signers, was at one time a shoemaker in 
New Milford, Connecticut. 

99. Jacob Behman, or Boehme, a German visionary of the 17th century. 
101. George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, or Quakers as they 
ftie more commonly called. 



64 WHITTIER. 

110 Rap, rap ! your stout and rough brogan, 
With footsteps slow and weary, 
May wander where the sky's blue span 

Shuts down upon the prairie. 
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 
115 By Saratoga's fountains, 

Or twinkle down the summer dance 
Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand, 
The brown earth to the tiller's, 
120 The shoe in yours shall wealth command, 
Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household maid 

Beheld the crown upon her, 
So all shall see your toil repaid 
125 With hearth and home and honor. 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed, 
In water cool and brimming, — 
" All honor to the good old Craft, 
Its merry men and women ! " 
130 Call out again your long array, 

In the old time's pleasant manner : 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 
Fling out his blazoned banner ! 

THE FISHERMEN. 

HuRKAH ! the seaward breezes 
136 Sweep down the bay amain ; 

117. A name early given to the White Mountains from the crystals fotmd 
tiiere by the first explorers, who thought them diamonds, 



SONGS 0^ LABOR. 66 

Heave up, my lads, the anchor ! 

Run up the sail again ! 
Leave to the lubber landsmen 

The rail-car and the steed ; 
140 The stars of heaven shall guide us? 

The breath of heaven shall speed. 

From the hill-top looks the steeple, 
And the light-house from the sand ; 

And the scattered pines are waving 
145 Their farewell from the land. 

One glance, my lads, behind us. 
For the homes we leave one sigh, 

Ere we take the change and chances 
Of the ocean and the sky. 

150 Now, brothers, for the icebergs 
Of frozen Labrador, 
Floating spectral in the moonshine^ 

Along the low, black shore ! 

"Where like snow the gannet's feathers 

165 On Brador's rocks are shed, 

And the noisy murr are flying, 

Like black scuds, overhead ; 

Where in mist the rock is hiding, 
And the sharp reef lurks below, 
160 And the white squall smites in summer. 
And the autumn tempests blow ; 
Where through gray and rolling vapor, 

From evening unto morn, 
A thousand boats are hailing, 
165 Horn answering unto horn. 



66 WHITTIER. 

Hurrah ! for the Ked Island, 

With the white cross on its crown ! 
Hurrah ! for Meccatina, 

And its mountains bare and brown ! 
170 Where the Caribou's tall antlers 

O'er the dwarf-wood freely toss, 
And the footstep of the Mickmack 

Has no sound upon the moss. 

There we '11 drop our lines, and gather 
176 Old Ocean's treasures in, 
Where'er the mottled mackerel 

Turns up a steel-dark fin. 
The sea 's our field of harvest, 
Its scaly tribes our grain ; 
180 We '11 reap the teeming waters 

As at home they reap the plain ! 

Our wet hands spread the carpet, 
And light the hearth of home ; 

From our fish, as in the old time, 
185 The silver coin shall come. 

As the demon fled the chamber 
Where the fish of Tobit lay, 

So ours from all our dwellings 
Shall frighten Want away. 

190 Though the mist upon our jackets 
In the bitter air congeals. 
And our lines wind stiff and slowly 
From off the frozen reels ; 

18T. See the story in the Booh of Tobit, one of the Apocrypha. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 57 

Though the fog be dark around us, 
195 And the storm blow high and loud, 
We will whistle down the wild wind, 
And laugh beneath the cloud ! 

In the darkness as in daylight, 
On the water as on land, 
200 God's eye is looking on us. 

And beneath us is His hand ! 
Death will find us soon or later, 

On the deck or in the cot ; 
And we cannot meet him better 
20B Than in working out our lot. 

Hurrah ! hurrah ! the west-wind 

Comes freshening down the bay, 
The rising sails are filling ; 

Give way, my lads, give way ! 
210 Leave the coward landsman clinging 

To the dull earth, like a weed ; 
The stars of heaven shall guide us, 

The breath of heaven shall speed I 



THE LUMBERMEN. 

Wildly round our woodland quarters 
216 Sad-voiced Autumn grieves i 

Thickly down these swelhng waters 

Float his fallen leaves. 
Through the tall and naked timber, 
Column-like and old, 



68 WEITTIER, 

220 Gleam the sunsets of November, 
From their skies of gold. 

O'er us, to the southland heading, 
Screams the gray wild-goose ; 

On the night-frost sounds the treading 
326 Of the brindled moose. 

Noiseless creeping, while we 're sleeping, 
Frost his task-work plies ; 

Soon, his icy bridges heaping, 
Shall our log-piles rise. 

230 When, with sounds of smothered thunder, 
On some night of rain, 
Lake and river break asunder 

Winter's weakened chain, 
Down the wild March flood shall bear them 
236 To the saw-mill's wheel, 

Or where Steam, the slave, shall tear them 
With his teeth of steel. 

Be it starlight, be it moonlight, 
In these vales below, 
240 When the earliest beams of sunlight 
Streak the mountain's snow, 
Crisps the hoar-frost, keen and early, 

To our hurrying feet. 
And the forest echoes clearly 
845 All our blows repeat. 

Where the crystal Ambijejis 

Stretches broad and clear, 
And Millnoket's pine-black ridges 

Hide the browsing deer : 



SONGS OF LABOR. 69 

sso Where, through lakes and wide morasses, 
Or through rocky walls, 
Swift and strong, Penobscot passes 
White with foamy falls ; 

Where through clouds, are glimpses given 
255 Of Katahdin's sides, — 

Rock and forest piled to heaven, 
Torn and ploughed by slides ! 
Far below, the Indian trapping, 
In the sunshine warm ; 
260 Far above, the snow-cloud wrapping 
Half the peak in storm ! 

Where are mossy carpets better 

Than the Persian weaves. 
And than Eastern perfumes sweeter 
265 Seem the fading leaves ; 
And a music mild and solemn, 

From the pine-tree's height, 
Rolls its vast and sea-like volume 

On the wind of night ; 

270 Make we here our camp of winter ; 
And, through sleet and snow. 
Pitchy knot and beechen splinter 

On our hearth shall glow. 
Here, with mirth to lighten duty, 
STB We shall lack alone 

Woman's smile and girlhood's beauty, 
Childhood's lisping tone. 

But their hearth is brighter burning 
For our toil to-day i 



60 WHITTIER. 

280 And the welcome of returning 
Shall our loss repay, 
"When, like seamen from the waters, 

From the woods we come, 
Greeting sisters, wives, and daughters, 
285 Angels of our home ! 

Not for us the measured ringing 

From the village spire, 
Not for us the Sabbath singing 

Of the sweet-voiced choir : 
290 Ours the old, majestic temple, 

Where God's brightness shines 
Down the dome so grand and ample, 

Propped by lofty pines ! 

Through each branch-enwoven skylight, 
29B Speaks He in the breeze, 
As of old beneath the twilight 

Of lost Eden's trees ! 
For His ear, the inward feeling 
Needs no outward tongue ; 
800 He can see the spirit kneeling 
While the axe is swung. 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim. 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 
808 Are alike to Him. 

Strike, then, comrades ! Trade is waiting 

On our rugged toil ; 
Far ships waiting for the freighting 

Of our woodland spoil ! 



SONGS OF LABOR. 61 

810 Ships, whose traffic links these highlands, 
Bleak and cold, of ours, 
With the citron-planted islands 

Of a clime of flowers ; 
To our frosts the tribute bringing 
816 Of eternal heats ; 

In our lap of winter flinging 
Tropic fruits and sweets. 

Cheerily, on the axe of labor, 
Let the sunbeams dance, 
820 Better than the flash of sabre 
Or the gleam of lance ! 
Strike ! With every blow is given 

Freer sun and sky, 
And the long-hid earth to heaven 
825 Looks, with wondering eye ! 

Loud behind us grow the murmurs 

Of the age to come ; 
Clang of smiths, and tread of farmers, 

Bearing harvest home ! 
830 Here her virgin lap with treasures 

Shall the green earth fill ; 
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears 

Crown each beechen hill. 

Keep who will the city's alleys, 
835 Take the smooth-shorn plain ; 
Give to us the cedarn valleys. 

Rocks and hills of Maine ! 
In our North-land, wild and woody. 

Let us still have part : 



62 WHITTIER. 

340 Rugged nurse and mother sturdy, 
Hold us to thy heart ! 

Oh, our free hearts heat the warmer 
For thy breath of snow ; 

And our tread is all the firmer 
S46 For thy rocks below. 

Freedom, hand in hand with labor, 
Walketh strong and brave ; 

On the forehead of his neighbor 
No man writeth Slave ! 

860 Lo, the day breaks ! old Katahdin's 
Pine-trees show its fires. 
While from these dim forest gardens 

Rise their blackened spires. 
Up, my comrades ! up and doing I 
355 Manhood's rugged play 
Still renewing, bravely hewing 
Through the world our way ! 



THE SHIP-BUILDERS. 

The sky is ruddy in the east, 
The earth is gray below, 
S60 And, spectral in the river-mist, 

The ship's white timbers show. 
Then let the sounds of measured stroke 

And grating saw begin ; 
The broad-axe to the gnarled oak, 
86B The mallet to the pin ! 



SONGS OF LABOR. 6S 

Hark ! roars the bellows, blast on blast. 

The sooty smithy jars, 
And fire-sparks, rising far and fast, 

Are fading with the stars. 
mo All day for us the smith shall stand 

Beside that flashing forge ; 
All day for us his heavy hand 

The groaning anvil scourge. 

From far-off hills, the panting team 
S76 For us is toiling near ; 

For us the raftsmen down the stream 

Their island barges steer. 
Rings out for us the axe-man's stroke 
In forests old and still ; 
880 For us the century-circled oak 
Falls crashing down his hill. 

Up 1 up ! in nobler toil than ours 

No craftsmen bear a part : 
"We make of Nature's giant powers 
386 The slaves of human Art. 

Lay rib to rib and beam to beam, 

And drive the treenails free ; 
Nor faithless joint nor yawning seam 

Shall tempt the searching sea ! 

390 Where'er the keel of our good ship 
The sea's rough field shall plough ; 
Where'er her tossing spars shall drip 

With salt-spray caught below ; 
That ship must heed her master's beck, 
898 Her helm obey his hand, 



64 WHITTIER, 

And seamen tread her reeling deck 
As if they trod the land. 

Her oaken ribs the vulture-beak 
Of Northern ice may peel ; 
400 The sunken rock and coral peak 
May grate along her keel ; 
And know we well the painted shell 

We give to wind and wave, 
Must float, the sailor's citadel, 
40B Or sink, the sailor's grave ! 

Ho ! strike away the bars and blocks, 

And set the good ship free ! 
Why lingers on these dusty rocks 

The young bride of the sea ? 
410 Look ! how she moves adown the gi'ooves. 

In graceful beauty now ! 
How lowly on the breast she loves 

Sinks down her virgin prow! 

God bless her ! vvheresoe'er the breeze 
41B Her snowy wing shall fan, 
Aside the frozen Hebrides, 

Or sultry Hindostan ! 
Where'er, in mart or on the main, 
With peaceful flag unfurled, 
420 She helps to wind the silken chain 
Of commerce round the world ! 

Speed on the ship ! But let her bear 

No merchandise of sin, 
No groaning cargo of despair 
42B Her roomy hold within j 



SONGS OF LABOR. 65 

No Lethean drug for Eastern lands, 

Nor poison-draught for ours ; 
But honest fruits of toiling hands 

And Nature's sun and showers. 

430 Be hers the Prairie's golden grain, 
The Desert's golden sand, 
The clustered fruits of sunny Spain, 

The spice of Morning-land ! 
Her pathway on the open main 
435 May blessings follow free, 

And glad hearts welcome back again 
Her white sails from the sea ! 



THE DROVERS. 

Thkough heat and cold, and shower and sunj 
Still onward cheerily driving ! 
440 There 's life alone in duty done. 
And rest alone in striving. 
But see ! the day is closing cool, 
The woods are dim before us ; 
The white fog of the wayside pool 
445 Is creeping slowly o'er us. 

The night is falling, comrades mine. 

Our footsore beasts are weary, 
And through yon elms the tavern sign 

Looks out upon us cheery. 
450 The landlord beckons from his door, 

His beechen fire is glowing ; 
These ample barns, with feed in stor©^ 

Are filled to overflowing. 



66 WHITTIER. 

From many a valley frowned across 
465 By brows of rugged mountains ; 

From hillsides where, through spongy moss, 

Gush out the river fountains ; 
From quiet farm-fields, green and low, 
And bright with blooming clover ; 
460 From vales of corn the wandering crow 
No richer hovers over ; 

Day after day our way has been 
O'er many a hill and hollow ; 

By lake and stream, by wood and glen, 
465 Our stately drove we follow. 

Through dust-clouds rising thick and dun, 
A smoke of battle o'er us. 

Their white horns glisten in the sun, 
Like plumes and crests before us. 

470 We see them slowly climb the hill. 
As slow behind it sinking ; 
Or, thronging close, from roadside rill, 

Or sunny lakelet, drinking. 
Now crowding in the narrow road, 
476 In thick and struggling masses, 
They glare upon the teamster's load, 
Or rattling coach that passes. 

Anon, with toss of horn and tail. 
And paw of hoof, and bellow, 
480 They leap some farmer's broken pale. 
O'er meadow-close or fallow. 

Forth comes the startled goodman ; forth 
Wife, children, house-dog, sally. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 67 

Till once more on their dusty path 
488 The baffled truants rally. 

We drive no starvelings, scraggy grown, 

Loose-legged, and ribbed and bony, 
Like those who grind their noses down 

On pastures bare and stony, — 
490 Lank oxen, rough as Indian dogs, 

And cows too lean for shadows, 
Disputing feebly with the frogs 

The crop of saw-grass meadows ! 

In our good drove, so sleek and fair, 
498 No bones of leanness rattle, 

No tottering hide-bound ghosts are there, 

Or Pharaoh's evil cattle. 
Each stately beeve bespeaks the hand 
That fed him unrepining ; 
800 The fatness of a goodly land 
In each dun hide is shining. 

We 've sought them where, in warmest nooks, 

The freshest feed is growing, 
By sweetest springs and clearest brooks 
605 Through honeysuckle flowing ; 
Wherever hillsides, sloping south. 

Are bright with early grasses, 
Or, tracking green the lowland's drouth. 

The mountain streamlet passes. 

610 But now the day is closing cool. 
The woods are dim before us, 
The white fog of the wayside pool 
Is creeping slowly o'er uso 



68 WHITTIER. 

The cricket to the frog's bassoon 
615 His shrillest time is keeping ; 
The sickle of yon setting moon 
The meadow-mist is reaping. 

The night is falling, comrades mine, 
Our footsore beasts are weary, 
620 And through yon elms the tavern sign 
Looks out upon us cheery. 
To-morrow, eastward with our charge 

We '11 go to meet the dawning, 
Ere yet the pines of Kearsarge 
625 Have seen the sun of morning. 

"When snow-flakes o'er the frozen earth, 

Instead of birds, are flitting ; 
When children throng the glowing hearth. 

And quiet wives are knitting ; 
580 While in the firelight strong and clear 

Young eyes of pleasure glisten, 
To tales of all we see and hear 

The ears of home shall listen. 

By many e, Northern lake and hiU, 
835 From many a mountain pasture, 
Shall fancy play the Drover still, 

And speed the long night faster. 
Then let us on, through shower and sun. 
And heat and cold, be driving ; 
840 There 's life alone in duty done. 
And rest alone in striving. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 



THE HUSKERS. 

It was late in mild October, and the long autumnal 
rain 

Had left the summer harvest-fields all green with 
grass again ; 

The first sharp frost had fallen, leaving all the 
woodlands gay 
6« With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the meadow- 
flowers of May. 

Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the sun 
rose broad and red, 

At first a rayless disk of fire, he brightened as he 
sped ; 

Yet, even his noontide glory fell chastened and sub- 
dued. 

On the cornfields and the orchards, and softly pic- 
tured wood. 

660 And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping to the 

night, 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with yellow 

light ; 
Slanting through the painted beeches, he glorified 

the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay brighter, 

greener still. 

And shouting boys in woodland haunts caught 
glimpses of that sky, 
865 Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and laughed, 
they knew not why, 



70 WHITTIER. 

And school-girls gay with aster-flowers, beside the 

meadow brooks, 
Mingled the glow of autumn with the sunshine of 

sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the patient 
weathercocks ; 

But even the birches on the hill stood motionless 
as rocks. 
KM No sound was in the woodlands, save the squirrel's 
dropping shell, 

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, low rust- 
ling as they fell. 

The summer grains were harvested ; the stubble-fields 

lay dry, 
Where June winds rolled, in light and shade, the 

pale green waves of rye ; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys fringed with 
wood, 
B6B Ungathered, bleaching in the sun, the heavy corn 
crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, through husks 

that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone out the 

yellow ear ; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many a verdant 

fold. 
And glistened in the slanting light the pumpkin's 

sphere of gold. 



SONGS OF LABOR. 71 

970 There wrought the busy harvesters ; and many a 
creaking wain 

Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk 
and grain ; 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank 
down, at last, 

And like a merry guest's farewell, the day in bright- 
ness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on meadow, 

stream, and pond, 
«t5 Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all afire be° 

yond. 
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluffs a milder glory 

shone. 
And the sunset and the raoonrise were mingled into 

one ! 



As thus into the quiet night the twilight lapsed 

away. 
And deeper in the brightening moon the tranquil 
shadows lay ; 
580 From many a brown old farm-house, and hamlet 
without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, the merry 
buskers came. 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from pitchforks 

in the mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the pleasant scena 

below I 



72 WHITTIER. 

The growing pile of husks behind, the golden ears 
before, 
885 And laughing eyes and busy hands and brown cheeks 
glimmering o'er. 

Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look and 

heart, 
Talking their old times over, the old men sat apart ; 
While up and down the unhusked pile, or nestling in 

its shade. 
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, the happy 

children played. 

590 Urged by the good host's daughter, a maiden young 

and fair. 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft 

brown hair, 
The master of the village school, sleek of hair and 

smooth of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking- 

ballad sung. 



THE CORN-SONG. 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard I 
895 Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 
From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 
The apple from the pine, 
•00 The orange from its glossy green, 
The cluster from the vine i 



SONGS OF LABOR. 78 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow, 
To cheer us when the storm shall drift 
605 Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 

Our ploughs their furrows made, 
While on the hills the sun and showers 

Of changeful April played. 

610 We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 
Beneath the sun of May, 
And frightened from our sprouting grain 
The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 
616 Its leaves grew green and fair. 
And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with Autumn's moonlit eves, 
Its harvest-time has come, 
620 We pluck away the frosted leaves, 
And bear the treasure home. 

There, when the snows about us drift, 

And winter winds are cold. 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, 
626 And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board ; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk, 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

J 



74 WHITTIER. 

630 Where'er the wide old kitchen heartli 
Sends up its smoky curls, 
Who will not thank the kindly earth. 
And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, 
63B Whose folly laughs to scorn 
The blessing of our hardy grain, 
Our wealth of golden corn ! 

Let earth withhold her goodly root, 
Let mildew blight the rye, 
640 Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, 
The wheat-field to the fly : 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for His golden corn, 
64B Send up our thanks to God ! 



SELECTED POEMS. 75 

IV. 
SELECTED POEMS. 

THE BAEEFOOT BOY, 

Blessings on thee, little man, 

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 

With thy turned-up pantaloons. 

And thy merry whistled tunes ; 
3 With thy red lip, redder still 

Kissed by strawberries on the hill ; 

With the sunshine on thy face. 

Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace ; 

From my heart I give thee joy, — 
10 I was once a barefoot boy ! 

Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 

Only is republican. 

Let the million-dollared ride ! 

Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
15 Thou hast more than he can buy 

In the reach of ear and eye, — ■ 

Outward sunshine, inward joy : 

Blessings on thee, barefoot boy I 

Oh for boyhood's painless play, 
20 Sleep that wakes in laughing day. 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 



76 WHITTIER. 

Of the wild-flower's time and place, 

25 Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well : 

30 How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung ; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 

36 Where the wood-grape's clusters shine ; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way. 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! 

40 For, eschewing books and tasks, 
Nature answers all he asks ; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — 

45 Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 

50 I was rich in flowers and trees. 
Humming-birds and honey-bees ; 
For my sport the squirrel played, 
Plied the snouted mole his spade ; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 

56 Purpled over hedge and stone ; 



SELECTED POEMS. 77 

Laughed the brook for my delight 

Through the day and through the night, 

Whispering at the garden wall, 

Talked with me from fall to fall ; 
€0 Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, 

Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 

Mine on bending orchard trees, 

Apples of Hesperides ! 

Still as my horizon grew, 
65 Larger grew my riches too ; 

All the world I saw or knew 

Seemed a complex Chinese toy. 

Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

Oh for festal dainties spread, 
70 Like my bowl of milk and bread ; 

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood. 

On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 

O'er me, like a regal tent, 

Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
75 Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 

Looped in many a wind-swung fold ; 

While for music came the play 

Of the pied frogs' orchestra ; 

And, to light the noisy choir, 
80 Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 

I was monarch : pomp and joy 

Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man. 
Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 
85 Though the flinty slopes be hard. 
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 



78 WHITTIER. 

Every morn shall lead thee through 
Fresh baptisms of the dew ; 
Every evening from thy feet 

90 Shall the cool wind kiss the heat : 
All too soon these feet must hide 
In the prison cells of pride, 
Lose the freedom of the sod, 
Like a colt's for work be shod, 

96 Made to tread the mills of toil, 
Up and down in ceaseless moil : 
Happy if their track be found 
Never on forbidden ground ; 
Happy if they sink not in 
100 Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 
Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 
Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 



HOW THE ROBIN CAME, 

AN ALGONQUIN LEGENDo 

Happy young friends, sit by me, 
Under May's blown apple-tree. 
While these home-birds in and out 
Through the blossoms flit about. 

5 Hear a story, strange and old, 
By the wild red Indians told, 
How the robin came to be : 
Once a great chief left his son, — 
Well-beloved, his only one, — 

io When the boy was well-nigh grown, 
In the trial-lodge alone. 
Left for tortures long and slow 



SELECTED POEMS. 79 

Youths like him must undergo, 
Who their pride of manhood test, 
15 Lacking water, food, and rest. 

Seven days the fast he kept, 

Seven nights he never slept. 

Then the young boy, wrung with pain, 

Weak from nature's overstrain, , 
20 Faltering, moaned a low complaint : 

" Spare me, father, for I faint ! " 

But the chieftain, haughty-eyed, 

Hid his pity in his pride. 

" You shall be a hunter good, 
25 Knowing never lack of food : 

You shall be a warrior great, 

Wise as fox and strong as bear ; 

Many scalps your belt shall wear, 

If with patient heart you wait 
30 Bravely till your task is done. 

Better you should starving die 

Than that boy and squaw should cry 

Shame upon your father's son ! " 

When next morn the sun's first rays 
36 Glistened on the hemlock sprays, 

Straight that lodge the old chief sought, 

And boiled samp and moose meat brought. 

" Rise and eat, my son ! " he said. 

Lo, he found the poor boy dead ! 
40 As with grief his grave they made, 

And his bow beside him laid. 

Pipe, and knife, and wampum-braid, 

On the lodge-top overhead, 



80 WHITTIER. 

Preening smooth its breast of red 

45 And the brown coat that it wore, 
Sat a bird, unknown before. 
And as if with human tongue, 
" Mourn me not," it said, or sung ; 
" I, a bird, am still your son, 

50 Happier than if hunter fleet, 
Or a brave, before your feet 
Laying scalps in battle won. 
Friend of man, my song shall cheer 
Lodge and corn-land ; hovering near, 

65 To each wigwam I shall bring 
Tidings of the coming spring ; 
Every child my voice shall know 
In the moon of melting snow, 
When the maple's red bud swells, 

60 And the wind-flower lifts its bells. 
As their fond companion 
Men shall henceforth own your son, 
And my song shall testify 
That of human kin am I." 

65 Thus the Indian legend saith 
How, at first, the robin came 
With a sweeter life and death. 
Bird for boy, and still the same. 
If my young friends doubt that this 

70 Is the robin's genesis, 

Not in vain is still the myth 

If a truth be found therewith : 

Unto gentleness belong 

Gifts unknown to pride and wrong ; 

75 Happier far than hate is praise, — - 
He who sings than he who slays. 



SELECTED POEMS. 81 



TELLING THE BEES. 

[A remarkable custom, brouglit from the Old Country, formerly 
prevailed in the rural districts of New England. On the death of 
a member of the family, the bees were at once informed of the 
event, and their hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was 
supposed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leaving- 
their hives and seeking a new home. The scene is minutely that 
of the Whittier homestead.] 

Here is the place ; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook, 

5 There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yardj, 
And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

TL :re are the beehives ranged in the sun ; 
10 And down by the brink 

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'errun, 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 
Heavy and slow ; 
15 And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows, 
Ajid the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 
20 Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 



82 WHITTIER. 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed ofE the burrs, and smoothed my hair, 

And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat. 

25 Since we parted, a month had passed, — 
To love, a year ; 
Down through the beeches I looked at last 

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 
30 Of light through the leaves, 

The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, 
The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 
The house and the trees, 
36 The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, — 
Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall. 

Forward and back, 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 
40 Draping each hive with a shred of black. 

Trembling, I listened : the summer sun 

Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of one 

Gone on the journey we all must go ! 

45 Then I said to myself, " My Mary weeps 
For the dead to-day : 



SELECTED POEMS. 83 

Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away." 

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, 
60 With his cane to his chin, 

The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 
Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 
In my ear sounds on : — 
55 " Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 
Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " 



SWEET FERN. 

The subtle power in perfume found 
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned ; 

On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound 
No censer idly burned. 

6 That power the old-time worships knew. 
The Corybantes' frenzied dance, 
The Pythian priestess swooning through 
The wonderland of trance. 

And Nature holds, in wood and field, 
.0 Her thousand sunlit censers still ; 
To spells of flower and shrub we yield 
Against or with our will. 

I climbed a hill path strange and new 
With slow feet, pausing at each turn ; 



84 WHITTIER. 

15 A sudden waft of west wind blew 
The breath of the sweet fern. 

That fragrance from my vision swept 

The alien landscape ; in its stead, 
Up fairer hills of youth I stepped, 
20 As light of heart as tread. 

I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine 

Once more through rifts of woodland shade ; 
I knew my river's winding line 

By morning mist betrayed. 

25 With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, 
Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call 
Of birds, and one in voice and look 
In keeping with them all. 

A fern beside the way we went 
30 She plucked, and, smiling, held it up. 
While from her hand the wild, sweet scent 
I drank as from a cup. 

O potent witchery of smell ! 

The dust-dry leaves to life return, 
35 And she who plucked them owns the spell 
And lifts her ghostly fern. 

Or sense or spirit ? Who shall say 

What touch the chord of memory thrills ? 
It passed, and left the August day 
40 Ablaze on lonely hills. 



SELECTED POEMS. 85 

THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION DAY. 

The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I. 
5 To-day alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known; 
My palace is the people's hall. 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves to-day upon the list 
10 Beside the served shall stand ; 
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor. 
The weak is strong to-day ; 
15 And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 
Than homespun frock of gray. 

To-day let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide ; 
I set a plain man's common sense 
20 Against the pedant's pride. 
To-day shall simple manhood try 

The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 

25 While there 's a grief to seek redress, 
Or balance to adjust, 
Where weighs our living manhood less 
Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 



86 WHIT TIER. 

While there 's a right to need my vote^ 
30 A wrong to sweep away. 

Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat I 
A man 's a man to-day ! 



THE HILL-TOR 

The burly driver at my side, 

We slowly climbed the hill, 
Whose summit, in the hot noontide, 

Seemed rising, rising stilL 
6 At last, our short noon-shadows hid 

The top-stone, bare and brown. 
From whence, like Gizeh's pyramid, 

The rough mass slanted down. 

I felt the cool breath of the North ; 
10 Between me and the sun, 

O'er deep, still lake, and ridgy earth, 

I saw the cloud-shades run. 
Before me, stretched for glistening miles. 
Lay mountain-girdled Squam ; 
IS Like green-winged birds, the leafy isles 
Upon its bosom swam. 

And, glimmering through the sun-haze warm, 

Far as the eye could roam. 
Dark billows of an earthquake storm 
20 Beflecked with clouds like foam. 
Their vales in misty shadow deep. 

Their rugged peaks in shine, 

7. Gizeh's pyramid is one of the great pyramids on the banks of the Hile 
near Cairo. 
14. Squam or Asquam lake, at the base of the White Hills. 



SELECTED POEMS. 87 

I saw the mountain ranges sweep 
The horizon's northern line. 



25 There towered Chocorua's peak ; and west 
Moosehillock's woods were seen, 
With many a nameless slide-scarred crest 

And pine-dark gorge between. 
Beyond them, like a sun-rimmed cloudj 
30 The great Notch mountains shone, 
Watched over by the solemn-browed 
And awful face of stone ! 

" A good look-off ! " the driver spake i 
" About this time last year, 
36 I drove a party to the Lake, 

And stopped, at evening, here. 
'T was duskish down below ; but all 

These hills stood in the sun, 
Till, dipped behind yon purple wall<, 
40 He left them, one by one, 

"A lady, who, from Thornton hill. 

Had held her place outside. 
And, as a pleasant woman will, 

Had cheered the long, dull ride, 
46 Besought me, with so sweet a smile, 

That — though I hate delays — 
I could not choose but rest awhile, — 

(These women have such ways !) 

" On yonder mossy ledge she sat, 
50 Her sketch upon her knees, 

26. The nearer Indian form is Moosil^auke, 

32. See Hawthorne's story of The Great Stone Face, 



88 WHITTIER, 

A stray brown lock beneath her hat 

Unrolling in the breeze ; 
Her sweet face, in the sunset light 

Upraised and glorified, — 
85 I never saw a prettier sight 

In all my mountain ride. 

" As good as fair ; it seemed her joy 

To comfort and to give ; 
My poor, sick wife, and cripple boy, 
60 Will bless her while they live ! " 
The tremor in the driver's tone 

His manhood did not shame : 
" I dare say, sir, you may have known " - 

He named a well-known name. 

65 Then sank the pyramidal mounds. 
The blue lake fled away ; 
For mountain-scope a parlor's bounds, 

A lighted hearth for day ! 
From lonely years and weary miles 
70 The shadows fell apart ; 

Kind voices cheered, sweet human smiles 
Shone warm into my heart. 

We journeyed on ; but earth and sky 
Had power to charm no more ; 
75 Still dreamed my inward-turning eye 
The dream of memory o'er. 
Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 

To few who seek denied ; 
Too late we learn to prize above 
80 The whole round world beside ! 



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